Do you clean your crucible right after pouring ?

What I do to keep my crucibles clean is that after the pour (copper, bronze or cast iron) I quickly scrape off the inside of the orange hot crucible from sticky slag remains with a steel bar, it takes no more than a minute and then I return it to the furnace to let it cool slowly.

How do you guys this ?

 

I clean inside the crucible with a D shaped scraper welded on a steel bar while it's full of molten metal as part of the skimming process. Especially for aluminium scrap, you'd easily double the amount of dross that floats to the surface for skimming.

 

I never thought to do this, hopefully I can remember to try this with scrap aluminum.
At home the metal is pretty clean so I just do the top.
What's left in the crucible after a pour (pattern and ingots) is usually like a thin foil, and it comes out easier cold than hot.

 

I clearly remember skimming a full crucible of aluminium and getting it bright and clean after using painted car wheel scrap. I then remembered to scrape the insides of the crucible walls and the crud that came to the surface was easily equal to what was skimmed earlier. I find peeling thin aluminium from a cool crucible CAN peel some crucible material with it. This is with a quality silicon carbide crucible so I resist the temptation while it's cold. I leave the crucible out of the furnace after use, it's made to handle thermal shock.

 

Ive never seen that, not saying it is not out there, Morgan has lots of literature, but in some cases "induction furnace" it would be of little value and very expensive, you have to keep the cooling water on til the furnace lining is "coolish" which is pretty fast, placing the hot crucible in the furnace would slow that down , and the water pump can be pricy in a larger furnace

Ive had a long conversation with a pro, that was told by Morgan to store crucibles right side up, in the Navy we where always taught opening down, in his instance he was trying to get a refund on a early failure so I can see why they would tell him anything

I read all of morgans literature https://www.morganmms.com/en-gb/products/crucibles/morganite/salamander-super/ very bottom of page
as you read them you will notice it often says to follow manufacturers instructions, this is very weird thing for the Manufacturer to say...

Lastly https://www.morganmms.com/media/czqdbrai/cruciblecareuseandsafetyinformation-mgam.pdf
recommends coming to full temp over 2.5 hours! Come on now that's just straight up some BS, even the 200C half hour warm up is a little crazy for a super salamander , if you are buying the bargain crucibles from legends I can see a 10 Minutes at 200

one of the flyers says to clean crucibles while still warm, which is also what I was taught, Note Warm not hot ,not glowing red, warm like 400F degrees
for brass /bronze I scrape with the skimmer, which if properly sized is a good shape to match your crucible wall, invert to dump out trash, then store in a lidded metal bucket on a brick
( this is my process) in the Navy we would place them in the core oven which was almost always kept at 250F , but even if turned off air tight, if it was turned off we would preheat crucibles at 250F overnight before use if at all possible) obviously that is not a hobbiest practice but the metal bucket was the closest I have found)

for aluminum or Zamak as mentioned above I let them cool a bit more and peel out the foil

Laslty we will come back to the returning the crucible to the furnace, I dont do that because I leave my furnace air on till the lining is cooler think 400C or so for the sake of my burner which is very difficult to remove, so I dont want my crucible in the furnace with cold air being blown around it, in my old furnace I pulled the burner out and let the furnace cool in ambient air sometimes returning the crucible to the furnace, but not regualrly

Last note for anyone that has watched my videos, I normally invert my crucible on top on my ingot molds which at the end of a pour are filled with at least some metal and quite hot so it keeps the crucible warm longer then being returned to the furnace, , yes it is not an even heat which the interior of the furnace would be if you cut the air

As to the OP Morgan says in their literature to clean while warm, so clean before storage is the answer!

as to all the other muttering I did you need to warm and cool your crucibles slowly, but some IQ has to go into that operation, 2 hour preheat, and two hour cooling ??? who is paying for that fuel to perhaps get an additional 20 heats out of a crucible, my time is more valuable then that. an hour of my shop rate will buy a new crucible, I'm getting 25+ brass pours per crucible so about a year give or take, good enough

V/r HT1

P.S. I'm in Florida HUMID!!! worst possible environment for crucibles

 

That I do also, skimming off the crud from the hot liquid metal straight when taking out from the furnace. Then I pour and then I scrape the inside from the syrup which adheres to the inside wall, which cannot be removed without damaging the crucible after the crucible is cooled (and the syrup is frozen).
When returning it to the furnace, I put it a bit tilted to prevent sticking to the plinth. The walls are rather fragile (like 'papier maché') because they are from Kaowool coated with Fermit (a Satanite like stuff) which is very good heat resistant and very well insulating, unlike Mizzou concrete.